Net worth Q1 2015

Here’s my starting point for tracking my financial journey of increasing my net worth to a point where I can say I’m financially free. I’m actually many years into the journey already, but there are a lot of improvements to make over the next few years. I’m going make quarterly updates for us to see and discuss my progress on becoming financially independent.

Description of Assets/Debts:

Vehicle – Depending on who you ask, vehicles should or shouldn’t be used in a net worth calculation. In this case I’m using mine and I’ve taken the value from Kelly blue book. Which is an american site that will give you a reasonable idea of what your vehicle is worth. I used the current exchange rate of 1.25 USD to CND. The vehicle was bought used and there is a 4.85% loan on it until April 2017.

YMM House – The town house I purchased in Fort McMurray. Locked in until October 2017 for 3.49%. The asset value is a conservative estimate, 6 townhouses were sold in the same complex over the last 12 months all for the $340-360,000 range.

TFSA – Tax Free Savings Account – Currently holding JNJ, NOA, AGNC, PFE, SSG, TD, WIN and TSLA. The biggest risks in it are with NOA(my employer) which is a heavy construction company with a lot of their customers coming from the Canadian oil sands in Alberta and SSG a penny stock manufacturing company in Quebec. The rest I think are some what stable and provide decent dividends.

Non-Registered Investment – I started this account in 2007, before I really had any idea what RRSPs were.

RRSP – Registered Retirement Savings Plan – I contribute to this through work, they match 5% of my annual salary, so it’s pretty much a 100% gain on 5% of my salary if I contribute. When I set this up, I put it under a 30% CND funds, 30% USD funds and 40% international and emerging market funds. The idea behind this 3 years ago was that this account would be my save and forget account. I’d leave it to collect bi-weekly deposits and it would grow without me worrying about it until retirement. I didn’t even link this to my bank account because I didn’t want to see a massive drop and sell on a gut decision. So for this update, this line will remain empty.

“High” interest E-savings – This is just your typical savings account through RBC. I say “High” because it’s .8% which is pretty pathetic and it’s the majority of my money so I’m not even keeping up with inflation having it here. It’s a little insulting that a bank would call this a “high” interest.

Chequing Account – To pay bills, buy things, you know.

Not much to see at the moment, hopefully some growth in the coming months!

A breakdown of my assets and debts

Where can I improve?

On a high level there are a few obvious things I should correct in my investments. Here’s some options I’ll weigh over the next few months to improve my outlook and reduce my risk.

Get rid of the Non-registered investment account – I set this up before I had any idea about stocks. I had a university work-term where I made a lot of money and since high school I always wanted to learn about stocks. Until my TFSA and RRSP accounts are both maxed, I don’t see any advantage of holding money in this account. This will be transferred into an RRSP account.

Put my “High” interest savings account to work – almost a 3rd of my net worth is just sitting in an account slowly fading away to inflation. I was thinking about purchasing a condo in Calgary for my girlfriend and I instead of renting, but with low oil prices just starting to negatively affect prices in this market, I think it’s best we wait it out and see what the year brings.

Pay off the loan on my vehicle – This would give me an instant 4.59% return on the remaining balance of my loan. Not a huge pay off, but the sure thing is nice.

Manage my RRSP better – I should at least look at re-balancing taking my TFSA investments into consideration as well. I could also probably move these to lower fee funds to try and get a few percentage points more in my pocket.

Where do you guys see flaws in my investments? What do you think it the most urgent fix required? Let me know your thoughts!

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One comment

Hey I was wondering, now that you are up to 169K in savings, are you still stuck at 0.8% interest at RBC? I was just in my Tangerine account and they were offering me 3.25% on all new deposits until March 31st up to 500K. For that amount of cash, it seems like 4x interest would be worth it.

To make it even more worthwhile they will give you $50 just for opening a free account and putting $100 in it using my referral Orange Key (14038103S1). I don’t know of any other investment that gives you a guaranteed 50% profit, but this one does!